Fingers are now being pointed at a nearby population of badgers and herd owner Brian Jones said he was "bloody angry".

"When I was told the results of the tests I was absolutely gutted," he said. "This is a terrible thing to have to experience.

"If badgers are to blame it's only commonsense they should be included in the process to eliminate bovine TB.

"But at present there is nothing that can be done about them, even if they are riddled with the disease. They are untouchable."

The Farmers Union of Wales and rural politicians say the case illustrates the need for the Welsh Assembly to stop fiddling about with surveys and start ordering badger culls.

Opponents of badger culling claim cattle-to-cattle contact is the primary means of transmitting TB. But Mr Jones says he closed his Holstein-Friesian herd in 1973 precisely for this reason - to avoid buying in diseased animals.

He said: "My livestock have been free of disease for 33 years and now this happens out of the blue.

"My livestock do not come into contact with any other cattle, so the question must be asked; how did my cattle become infected with TB?" UK rural ministry Defra is currently consulting on a cull of badgers in England, prompting the RSPCA to take out full-page advertisements in national newspapers opposing such measures.

Mr Jones and wife Susan have 112 Holstein-Friesians and all remained disease-free until early February when two tested positive for bovine TB.

The infected cows were immediately isolated and slaughtered, and the whole herd will now have to test clear of bTB at the end of March and again at the end of May before Mr Jones can sell his surplus calves.

The cause of infection is believed to lie in a 26-acre area of woodland bordering his farm. He said: "There are badgers in the wood and I know they have been there for at least three years. I could see they have been digging in the field and I could see them in the morning running out with the cows."

Farmers' Union of Wales President Gareth Vaughan, who visited Mr Jones' farm, said farmers didn't want to exterminate every badger in the country.

"But we do want a controlled cull so that bovine TB is eliminated from Britain enabling healthy badgers to thrive," he said..

"Five years ago we saw foot-and-mouth ravage the UK ' s livestock industry. Bovine TB is doing exactly the same over a longer timescale."

Last year 30,172 cattle were slaughtered in Britain as a result of bovine TB, 6,676 of them in Wales. The disease has become rampant since the former strategy of containment was scrapped by the in-coming Blair government nine years ago.

Montgomeryshire AM Mick Bates accused the English and Welsh administrations of lacking the courage to order badger culls in the face of lobbying from animal welfare groups.

He said: "It's not sexy to kill badgers and they are afraid they will lose votes."

Assembly countryside minister Carwyn Jones, while admitting the Coedyparc case was "mysterious", stressed that other herds bordering the badger setts had not been infected.

He said: "TB is such a difficult problem. It's a very hard disease to eradicate and it will take a long time."

Movement rules are breached

THE farm industry in England and Wales breached health, welfare and transport regulations more than 65,000 times over 21 months, an investigation found.

Research by the Badger Trust also shows huge disparities in enforcement. It claims new pre-movement testing of cattle for TB may be ineffective if regulations aren't tightened up among farmers, hauliers, abattoirs and livestock markets.

The trust used the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to assess enforcement activity.

Its findings suggest the health and welfare of farm animals is a "county lottery", the trust said. For example, farmers who breach regulations in Cornwall are 15 times more likely to face prosecution than farmers in neighbouring Devon.

It also found that warnings were rarely followed up by prosecutions. In England and Wales, the ratio of warnings to prosecutions was 57:1 with some local authorities not initiating any criminal proceedings at all during the period of January 1, 2004, to September 30, 2005.